South Dakota Politics

Incompetence, National Security, & Whether HIGs Have Wings

The Administration's deft handling of the Wikileaks boondoggle reminds me of HIG. You remember, the High Priority Interrogation Group that the Administration decided, last year, would replace Bush's interrogation apparatus? HIG is supposed to be an elite team prepared to question "high priority" suspects and detainees whose information may be critical to stopping the next terrorist attack. Suppose you capture a member of a terrorist cell who knows where the anthrax bomb is hidden. Bring in the A Team.

After the Christmas Day Bomber failed to light up a Northwest Airlines Flight, it turned out that HIG wasn't quite shovel ready. From CBS last May:

The White House was furious when it found the HIG had not been officially formed in time to question Christmas Day bombing suspect Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab despite a direct order from the president last fall, according to one current and one former senior counterterrorist official. Both spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not cleared to speak to the news media.

HIG sounds like the kind of thing we might need. We didn't have it when we needed it last Yuletide. Do we have it yet? CBS has more:

The unit as it exists now is run by the FBI and headed by an FBI employee with two deputies - one from the CIA and one from the Defense Department, the officials said. Its three regional teams - their locations have not been disclosed - will be staffed by a full-time team of experts, including everything from linguists to terrorist analysts to professional interrogators.

Notice the future tense: "Its three regional teams will be staffed by a full-time team of experts." I take it that, as of May of this year, a year after the Administration decided to form the team and five months after the team forfeited the Christmas Day bombing try out, HIG still wasn't staffed. The locations of the regional teams are "undisclosed," I suspect, for the simple reason that it is difficult to locate something that doesn't exist. So far as one can tell from the article, there are as many agents in HIG as there are letters in the acronym.

Should these permanent teams ever be staffed, what would the staff be expected to do?

The permanent teams will be supplemented by other government specialists, depending on the suspect. The teams' duties include everything from questioning suspects to researching the best ways to get the most information out of them.

The HIG's mobile teams also won't necessarily be the first investigators on the scene, the officials say. Inside the U.S., it might be the FBI or an existing Joint Terrorism Task Force unit that responds first. The HIG's teams would then be deployed on a case-by-case basis to supplement those efforts stateside or overseas at military bases or foreign detention centers if the suspect is held by a willing U.S. ally.

Senior administration officials say while the HIG's teams were not designed to gather evidence for prosecution, they'll work to preserve evidence that might be needed in court.

Did you get all that? HIG will question suspects and research the best ways to get information out of suspects. Hey, they can kill two birds with one water board by doing both at the same time! If he sings, Joey, write it down.

But they won't be the first investigators on the scene. They'll "supplement the FBI or an existing Joint Terrorism Task Force," and "be supplemented by other government specialists." They're a kind of bureaucratic interrogation sandwich! I am not sure if exposing a terrorist suspect to all these layers of bureaucracy doesn't count as torture. But at least the FBI really exists. Doesn't it?

The HIG teams "aren't designed to gather evidence for prosecution, but they will work to preserve evidence." So while they are waiting to supplement and be supplemented by all these other diligent public servants, at least they can pull on some plastic gloves and put cigarette butts into test tubes.

There are two possible interpretations of this story. One is the Administration concluded that the HIG was a bad idea and decided that relying on existing agencies was the best thing. They just didn't have the honesty or courage to admit it. The other is that these people couldn't find their own ass if both hands were duct taped to it. I wish I knew which it was.

The Illusion that Climate Policy is About the Environment

Maybe he thought that he could get away with it because he said it in German. Ottmar Edenhofer is, according to Powerline,

the deputy director and chief economist at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, the joint chair of the IPCC's [International Panel for Climate Change] Working Group 3, and will co-chair the Working Group "Mitigation of Climate Change" at the upcoming summit in Cancun.

Here is a portion of an interview with Edenhofer in the Neue Zürcher Zeitung, 14 November 2010. The translation is from The Global Warming Policy Foundation. The latter is clearly hostile to the global warming movement, but using my meager German and Google translator, it looks to be correct. Bold face type is the interviewer.

The new thing about your proposal for a Global Deal is the stress on the importance of development policy for climate policy. Until now, many think of aid when they hear development policies.

That will change immediately if global emission rights are distributed. If this happens, on a per capita basis, then Africa will be the big winner, and huge amounts of money will flow there. This will have enormous implications for development policy. And it will raise the question if these countries can deal responsibly with so much money at all.

That does not sound anymore like the climate policy that we know.

Basically it's a big mistake to discuss climate policy separately from the major themes of globalization. The climate summit in Cancun at the end of the month is not a climate conference, but one of the largest economic conferences since the Second World War. Why? Because we have 11,000 gigatons of carbon in the coal reserves in the soil under our feet - and we must emit only 400 gigatons in the atmosphere if we want to keep the 2-degree target. 11 000 to 400 - there is no getting around the fact that most of the fossil reserves must remain in the soil.

De facto, this means an expropriation of the countries with natural resources. This leads to a very different development from that which has been triggered by development policy.

First of all, developed countries have basically expropriated the atmosphere of the world community. But one must say clearly that we redistribute de facto the world's wealth by climate policy. Obviously, the owners of coal and oil will not be enthusiastic about this. One has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy. This has almost nothing to do with environmental policy anymore, with problems such as deforestation or the ozone hole.

Wow. This is, of course, what libertarians and conservatives have always suspected about the climate change movement: that it's really about putting the economies of the developed world under the control of a handful of bureaucrats standing at a great remove from ordinary voters and not much at all about the environment.

Still, it's one thing to recognize that, and another thing for an IPCC official to actually come out and call internationale Klimapolitik what it really ist.  "It has almost nothing to do with environmental policy anymore."

The international movement to purge the climate of democratic emissions seems to have hit a snag in the U.S. with recent elections. Again from Powerline:

Last year's [Climate Change] conference in Copenhagen occurred to much fanfare. President Obama, Secretary Clinton, and Speaker Pelosi all attended. This year, they all apparently will be absent. The U.S. delegation will be led by a state department official named Todd Stern.

Mr. Stern's presence in Cancun will suggest to the Klimacrats how things ist in the U.S.

More Nigel Farage

A warm celebration of the Treaty of Lisbon:

Who the Hell Do They Think They Are?

Nigel Farage is leader of the United Kingdom Independence Party and a Member of the European Parliament from South East England. In the clip below he addresses his fellow Eurocrats and demolishes their bloated pretensions so thoroughly that you could bury what's left of them in a hollowed out pepper corn.

That, gentle readers, is political rhetoric. Allow me to highlight the two themes of this brief, brilliant, and utterly unmerciful statement of the obvious truth. Powerline, where I first saw the clip, has a transcript.

We had the Greek tragedy earlier on this year, and now we have the situation in Ireland. Now I know that the stupidity and greed of Irish politicians has a lot to do with this: they should never, ever have joined the euro. They suffered with low interest rates, a false boom and a massive bust.

But look at your response to them: what they are being told as their government is collapsing is that it would be inappropriate for them to have a general election. In fact [EU Economic and Monetary Affairs] Commissioner [Olli] Rehn here said they had to agree to their budget first before they are allowed to have a general election.

Just who the hell do you think you people are?

That is the first thing. The grand project of European unification has been, from the start, anti-Democratic. This was partly so of necessity. The European Union is composed of a number of nations with very different national cultures. The cultural differences are linguistic, historical, demographic, political, and, last but not least, economic. There is no way you can unify such a gaggle of cultures except by imposing a heavy hand from above.

But the European Union is also anti-Democratic due to the political culture of the Eurocrats, who are quite sure that they know better what is good for the peoples of Europe than the peoples do. They were quite happy to circumvent democracy in the process of ratifying the European Constitution Treaty (which failed) and the Lisbon Treaty (which passed). Now they are prepared to tell the Irish when they can hold a general election for their own damn government. Just who the hell do you think you people are?

Farage's second point is that the Eurocrats care a lot more about a cherished a sacred dream than they care about actual people.

You are very, very dangerous people indeed: your obsession with creating this euro state means that you are happy to destroy democracy, you appear to be happy with millions and millions of people to be unemployed and to be poor.

Creating a free trade zone in Europe was always a good and manageable idea. The United States managed it more than two hundred years ago. Creating a European government and monetary union was something else. It was never clear what benefits it would bring to the peoples of Europe beyond a quixotic ambition of returning Europe to superpower status. I think that the Eurocrats have long forgotten why they set out on this path. They have continued on it for the simple reason that they became more powerful as it progressed. Farage may be right that they game is now up.

Untold millions must suffer so that your euro dream can continue. Well it won't work, because it's Portugal next. With their debt levels of 325 percent of GDP they are the next ones on the list, and after that I suspect it will be Spain, and the bailout for Spain would be 7 times the size of Ireland, and at that moment all the bailout money has gone - there won't be any more.

But it's even more serious than economics, because if you rob people of their identity, if you rob them of their democracy, then all they are left with is nationalism and violence. I can only hope and pray that the euro project is destroyed by the markets before that really happens.

That first paragraph is, paradoxically, hopeful. European monetary union is headed toward collapse. So far, only the economic power of Germany has sustained it, and German charity is not without its limits. If and when German voters overrule the ambitions of their Eurocrat elites, the electorate in other European countries will jump ship. Farage sees this salvation, and he may be right.

That's because his second paragraph above is terrifying. As Europe is divided by people's speaking different tongues, so each European nation is divided by ethnicity, ideology and class. There are only two ways to manage these tensions. One is by authoritarian power imposed from above. The other is democracy. All the factions compete for a share of the powers of government. What happens if you take away democracy at the national level? Farage thinks that all that is left is nationalism and violence. He may well be right.

To answer MEP Farage's question, we know who the Hell these people think they are. The problem is, they never thought things through and stopped thinking at all a long time ago.

Giving Thanks

Thanksgiving is a good day to reflect on our blessings. I will take the occasion.

I am very thankful that I was born. I did nothing to deserve it. I am thankful for my parents, my grandparents and great grandparents going all the way back to the beginnings of life on this world. I am grateful for my mother whose smile drew me up out of nothing. I am grateful for my father, whose presence I now have to do without, but whose love I will never have to do without. I am grateful for my brother, whose big heart and pernicious sense of humor explain why God bothered to create humankind.

I am thankful that my wife and my children were born. I am thankful that, so far, nothing really bad has happened to me or, what would be the same thing, to them. I am grateful for every moment that any one of them is present before me or in my thoughts. I am grateful for the opportunity to love them and for the sometimes astonishing fact that they love me back. Whatever good I may have done in this world, it has not been nearly enough to earn such treasures.

I am thankful for friends that somehow tolerate me. I am especially grateful for my best friend Kenny Shelton who has been giving me grief for more than thirty years. I am grateful for my dog.

I am thankful that I get paid to talk to wonderful people about fascinating things. I am thankful for my students, especially Miranda, who repay me with more questions than I can answer and more challenges than I can meet. I am thankful that they do not just write down and accept what I say, but get all cheeky when something I say doesn't seem quite right.

I am thankful that the world is ceaselessly entertaining both on its surfaces and down to its very depths. I am thankful that I have the meager ability to appreciate how interesting everything is. I am grateful for St. Paul, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Machiavelli, Darwin, Miles Davis, and baseball.

I am thankful that I was born in a Republic. I am thankful that I enjoy the liberty to say and write what I think, without fear. I am thankful for the fact that I do not believe easily but that no belief I may hold can ever be illegal. I am thankful for George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Abraham Lincoln, and Shunryu Suzuki Roshi.

I am thankful that the tribes into which I and my fellow citizens divide ourselves solve our differences with bellicose speeches and ballots cast, instead of iron and blood. Having seen the beginning of Private Ryan, I am grateful that I was born in the right half of the twentieth century.

I am thankful for my laptop, this blog, and all the people who have seen fit to read it or comment on it. I am thankful for my friends and foes on the blogosphere, and for those who are both. I am thankful for my friend Ken Laster whose jazz podcast is one of the joys of my life, and for my own jazz radio show. I am thankful for my cast iron smoker and for the fact that God made pigs with ribs. I am thankful for beer.

That is no complete list of my blessings. These are some of the highlights. God bless everyone and all of you, and have a Happy Thanksgiving.

How do you solve a problem like Korea

This is going to be on the test: which President won the Second World War? Answer: Ronald Reagan. If I need to explain that, let me know. Now: which President won the Korean War? Answer: Barack Obama.

I do need to explain that. The explanation is "wishful thinking." The circumstances might be in place for this President to really deserve the Nobel Prize that was awarded to him in a fit of cognitive dissonance on the part of the Nobel Committee. Whether there is a chance to bring this conflict to an end is doubtful. That this President has the virtú required to realize such fortuna is more doubtful. Allow me to be optimistic.

Yesterday the Gangster Regime in North Korea started shooting.

The 50-minute barrage on the island of Yeonpyeong - which killed two South Korean marines, wounded at least 19 other people and set buildings and forests ablaze - marked the first time in years that North Korea has trained the firepower of its 1.1 million-strong military on South Korea's civilian population. It prompted a withering round of return fire from South Korean batteries, the scrambling of the South's air force and concerns that the firefight could spiral into all-out war.

This is the second act of aggression by Pyongyang this year. In March, a North Korea submarine torpedoed a South Korean naval vessel.

It is thought that this belligerence has something to do with the dynastic succession in Pyongyang. Kim Jong Il is ill, so the regime is grooming his son, Kim Jong-un to take over. No one outside the inner circles really understands all this. The same might be true of those in the inner circles. Kim Il Sung was the founding Al Capone of the North Korean regime. A cult was built around him, and that cult has necessitated a dynastic succession. It seems unlikely that Kim 2 or Kim 3 had or have any of the awful powers of their great predecessor. That the Party and the Army think they need to keep the bloodline suggests that the regime has no real center. That is interesting.

North Korea is the worst government on the planet. That would be merely appalling if it only starved, raped, and pillaged its own people. Unfortunately, it also threatens the genuine republics and dynamic economies around it. It's like the Playboy Gangster Crips, only with Nukes.

For decades the United States has tried to deal with the problem by negotiation, on the basis of a Jimmy Carteresque view of the situation. With the recent revelation of a large, sophisticated, and hitherto unsuspected uranium enrichment site, it is clear that the Pyongyang cannot be reasoned with. The North Koreans will never honor any agreement. This hideous regime is a threat to everyone. They are producing nuclear weapons and may well sell them to other regimes or to terrorists.

So what is to be done? A war against the North would certainly result in a victory for the U.S. and its allies, assuming China allowed it. But the North Koreans could do terrible damage to South Korea and Japan before it was over.

There are two strategies that might work with less peril. The regime in Pyongyang survives because the workers, if malnourished, don't all die and the soldiers aren't malnourished. This is largely because China supplies the regime with food and fuel, and the South also supports Pyongyang with direct aid and a small free trade zone on the border.

China doesn't want to see the regime collapse because it doesn't want to see a flood of Koreans across its borders. China also likes to watch North Korea distract and irritate the United States. One way to encourage China to change its strategy would be to offer a few nuclear weapons to Seoul and Tokyo. We could also help the Japanese build a real army. Beijing would rather put the pressure on North Korea, by threatening to shut the spigot, than see South Korea and Japan join the ranks of nuclear powers.

Meanwhile the U.S. and South Korea could cut off all aid. It looks like the totalitarian regime is already tottering. That alone might push it over the edge. The end of the regime should be our aim. The world just can't afford to tolerate it anymore.

This is the moment for the President to act. He needs to be imaginative and bold. If he is both, he might earn his place in history. I am not optimistic. I think the Jimmy Carter in him is the closest thing to a center than he has. Imagination and courage he has not. I hope I am wrong.

Harry Potter & the Deathly Hallows

If you have read all the Harry Potter books, then Deathly Hallows is a very good movie. If you haven't read the books but you've seen all the movies, and you are a quick study, it is almost as good a movie. If you have neither read the books nor seen any of the previous movies (surely someone somewhere will find himself in that situation), you had better have a taste for the kind of film that tells you almost nothing.

I think it is true that each movie in the Harry Potter series has functioned less as a standalone film than did its predecessor and more as an animated illustration appended to its book. In films based on books, a character will frequently say something that is a little bit artificial and out of place because it is necessary to provide the audience with background information. That was dispensed with more and more as the series went on.

If I am right about that, the first half of Deathly Hallows completes the process. Early in the film Hermione walks quietly up behind her parents, points her wand, and whispers "obliviate". Then she walks around the room magically removing herself from all the family photos. Not a word is spoken to explain what she is doing or why. The scene brought tears to my eyes because I had a very good idea of both. In scene after scene, the movie presents the characters acting in a context which is supplied by the book. Who is this new Weasley and who is this wispy blonde he is about to marry? What does the cryptic message delivered by the silver apparition have to do with the sudden appearance of malevolent, smoldering ghosts?

This is not a criticism. Quite the contrary, it is a sign that the death of the book has been greatly exaggerated. When a film is based on a book, the former usually cannibalizes the original characters and storylines until they are almost unrecognizable. Consider the Basil Rathbone Sherlock Holmes movies, or the James Bond films. In the case of Harry Potter, the opposite has happened. Such is the power of the books and so widely have they been read and become part of the audience consciousness that the books devoured the movies.

I have a hard time imagining a better film adaption of this book than this movie. I always find pacing in this sort of film to be a bit disappointing. I listened to an audio production over four days while traveling this summer. That gave a sense of great events carried out over a significant period of time. No single film can compete with that.

What the film did it did very well. Each scene was exquisitely crafted. I don't think a single one fell short. A lot of very powerful actors got only minutes to work their craft, but that was enough. Alan Rickman's Severus Snape (may his name be praised!) gets one good shot. I am haunted by it. But of course, I know what Snape's enigmatic expressions meant when he watched as a colleague from Hogwarts tortured and murdered. I know who and what Snape is.

The three main actors are superb as usual. The landscapes, sets, and visual effects are all stunning. CGI my ass, they hired real house elves to play house elves. I was thoroughly captured and delighted by the movie. Of course, I was delighted by the book.

The Rise of Cult of Biden

There are ominous signs in the entrails of the press that pious hope for any change in Barack Obama is all but extinguished. Consider this, from the Daily Caller:

Reporter Lisa DePaulo pressed [Vice President Joe] Biden repeatedly on why President Obama isn't connecting with the American public and is instead viewed as professorial and aloof. "So what is it?" asked DePaulo.

"I think what it is, is he's so brilliant. He is an intellectual," Biden said.

So that's what it is! Obama is just too damn smart for us rubes to comprehend. It isn't his fault he is failing to connect. He is like a Vorlon in Babylon 5. He drifts into the room in his encounter suit and says something cryptic and we are supposed to recognize the inevitable wisdom of it. Only we are just not evolved enough to understand. That would at least explain the Greek columns at Obama's nomination acceptance speech.

It is DePaulo's puff piece introduction to her interview with Biden, however, that is the greatest expression of Obama's expansive emptiness.

There are only two reporters traveling coast-to-coast with the vice president on Air Force Two on a clear day in early October. Which is two more than usual. Even though Joe Biden is in the midst of a long-overdue respectfest—the recent 9,300-word Atlantic opus declaring him "indispensable," the eighty or so floundering Democratic candidates who called Joe before O to come stump for them—he's still largely ignored by the press.

Biden's "long-overdue respectfest" is underway now! DePaulo mentions Mark Bowden's "9,300 word opus" in the Atlantic. Opus? Yes, that's the right word. That, or paean. Where are the Greek columns around this Apollo?

Joe Biden doesn't just meet you, he engulfs you. There's the direct contact with his blue eyes, the firm handshake while his other hand grasps your arm, the flash of those famously perfect white teeth, and an immediate frontal assault on your personal space. He shoulders right through the aura of fame and high office. Forget the Secret Service, the ever-present battery of aides and advisers, the photographers clicking away: the vice president of the United States moves in like an old pal with something urgent to tell you—just you. If he's in a chair, he'll scoot it closer; when the furniture's not portable, he'll lean forward, planting his elbows on his knees, gesturing with both hands while he speaks, occasionally reaching over to touch your arm or leg for emphasis.

Bowden is one more reporter who got a tingle up his leg, this time because he was engulfed by a blue eyed, white-teethed Joe Biden who actually (drum roll) touched his leg. Isn't this a bit pathological?

Nature abhors a vacuum, and the emptiness that is Barack Obama is pulling Joe Biden out of the miasmal mists. Joe Biden is the most ordinary of politicians. Over decades of political life he has demonstrated no virtues. He has more than ordinary defects when it comes to speaking his mind. In his first act of bad judgment, Barack Obama plucked Biden from near obscurity. Now, when the President needs be reinventing himself, a "respectfest" is underway for his Vice President.

There are two possible interpretations of this. One is that the insufficiently tingled press, having lost faith in He Who Blessed the Waffle, is kicking the Messiah upstairs and turning to worship his second in command.

The other is more prosaic. A lot of people in the left-leaning press must be asking themselves: what if Obama doesn't recover from this lowly state? Bill Clinton did, after 1994. Barack Obama, for better or worse, is no Bill Clinton. What if Obama follows the advice of some creative thinkers at the Washington Post and chooses not to seek reelection? The Democrats will have to run somebody in 2012 and somebody in 2016.

Either way, the rise of the cult of Biden is a sign of how far Barack Obama has fallen.

Socrates' Question2

Bill and Miranda have been engaged in an interesting discussion attached to my last post. I didn't have time to look at it in detail until tonight. I distinguished three views on justice: 1) Relativism; 2) Divine Command Theory; and 3) Natural Right. Someone familiar with ethics may wonder why I leave out Kantian deontology. That is because, powerful though that current of thought is, I think it ultimately collapses either to 2) or 3), or some attempted synthesis of both.

Bill thinks I dismiss relativism too quickly. I think he proves my point. He has a lot to say about changing points of view and situational ethics, but he doesn't say what he might have said to prove he really believes all of this. It would go something like this: slavery is wrong relative to the anti-slavery perspective (and situation) of some people, but just and good from the perspective of others; gassing millions of people to death and throwing some children alive into the ovens was wrong relative to modern liberal principles but perfectly acceptable, indeed morally laudable, relative to Nazi moral culture; none of these views is inherently more correct than any other. That is what one would have to say if one believes that all moral principles are indeed true only relative to the perspective of some viewer.

With one exception, everyone I have ever met who professed to believe in relativism did so because they were generous, tolerant people. In fact, they more or less consciously privilege tolerance and respect for human dignity as uberprinciples standing above all the relative ones. Hence my dismissal of relativism.

Miranda challenges each part of my post. When I say that Divine Command Theory provides a basis for morality that irrational, I mean only that it does so in so far as we think that the just is just because God loves it. Since we cannot know the mind of God, we cannot know why He loves what He loves. Perhaps we don't need to know. At any rate, to say that the basis for morality is irrational doesn't mean that there is no basis, only that reason cannot determine what it is.

When we consider such doctrines as the immortal soul and hellfire, this I think supports the view that justice is irrational. Why should I refrain from murder? Not because murder is really bad, but because getting caught and being punished for murder is bad. Perhaps I can evade human authorities, but I cannot evade the Divine authority. But what if I had a GET OUT OF JAIL FREE card, and a GET OUT OF HELL FREE card? Would there still be a reason not to murder, rape, and pillage?

The classical Greek thinkers believed there was. Thucydides showed that when the Greek cities conducted their foreign policies without any regard to justice, they taught their citizens to behave toward one another in the same way. He describes the resulting horrors with immortal genius. Socrates carried that idea down to the soul itself in Plato's Gorgias and Republic. When one commits injustice toward others, one feeds the worse parts of the soul at the expense of the better parts, unleashing civil war and unquenchable desires inside oneself. To destroy oneself spiritually is the worst thing that can happen to a human being, Socrates supposed. It is right to do what is right, regardless of fear of other men or supernatural punishments. I think Socrates was right, as usual.

Miranda asks: "why should one feel guilty about breaking the social contract?" Take your hand and bite it good and hard. It hurts. Human beings are dangerous creatures and we are not above eating one another. There is real horror in human history. I think that is evidence enough of genuine evil without having to consider Satan. To break the social contract turns friends into enemies and enemies into a hostile alliance. To teach others to do so will, if it goes far enough, unleash Hell on earth.

To say that our moral intuitions are evolved dispositions is essential to a rational defense of moral principles. There is a part of the brain called the "insula". It is activated when we smell rotten food and feel disgust. It is also activated when we feel disgust at the sight of something morally repugnant. From a superb article in the New York Times:

Now read in the newspaper about a saintly old widow who had her home foreclosed by a sleazy mortgage company, her medical insurance canceled on flimsy grounds, and got a lousy, exploitative offer at the pawn shop where she tried to hock her kidney dialysis machine. You sit there thinking, those bastards, those people are scum, they're worse than maggots, they make me want to puke … and your insula activates.

Human beings are moral animals. There is a reason why the moral principles enumerated in the Buddhist Eightfold Path are very similar to those in the Ten Commandments. Without the kinds of brain we have, human morality would be impossible. As it is, it is both possible and necessary. Evolution explains how the brain develops and is sustained across millions of years of our organic history.

Moral principles are as real as principles of hygiene. Evil is as real as the Ebola virus. These are good things to know. So I think that, at least in some cases, God loves the pious because it is pious. A rational explanation of morality doesn't mean that faith is unfounded or unnecessary. However we conceive of the Creator, this is how He created us. Perhaps we cannot be good without faith in and fear of God.

Finally: our moral intuitions are hardly infallible. What disgusts us physically is not always bad, and what seems very tasty is often very bad. The same goes for what disgusts us morally. Likewise, Bill is certainly right that moral principles have to be applied according to the situation, just as rules of hygiene do. Moral and religious traditions have tried to do just that by trial and error over thousands of years. Socrates did it by rational thought.

Socrates’ Question

In a previous post Miranda directs us to a fundamental question:

Does the fact that something might make society worse off necessarily make it wrong, and does something that makes society better necessarily make it right? One might argue, for instance, that killing Asia Bibi helps society by discouraging blasphemy. Is it, then, right to kill her? And are we really all better off when we care about the worse off? If we think that it is good for our souls, I suspect that we are. But what if we don't consider souls?

Socrates, in the Euthyphro, asks the question this way:

Is the pious [action] pious because God loves it; or does God love it because it is pious?

This question drove a wedge between philosophy and religion that has been a conspicuous feature of Western thought to this day. I will attempt to unpack it.

All undamaged human beings (that is, excluding psychopaths) have strong moral intuitions (or moral passions). Some things strike us as morally abhorrent and other things a morally heroic. See Schindler's List for vivid and unambiguous examples of both.

Despite all the popular babble about multiculturalism, there are really only three opinions about our moral intuitions. One is that these passions are nothing more than individual or collective tastes, as in "I like vanilla ice cream" or "the Spartans preferred simpler columns than the Athenians". That is called relativism, and a lot of people profess to believe it but almost no one really does.

The second view is that the morally abhorrent is such because God hates it and vice versa with the morally laudable. Because God is infinitely good, what He likes and dislikes what is simply good and bad respectively. Since we cannot know the mind of God, our moral intuitions are grounded in revelation that is beyond reason. In that case, the pious is pious because and perhaps only because God loves it.

The third view is that the morally abhorrent is such for the same reasons as some things are physically abhorrent. Spoiled meat is offensive because it destroys human bodies. Murder is bad because it destroys human communities, breaks human hearts, and corrupts the murderer. In that case, God loves pious because it is pious and we can understand exactly why it is pious.

The latter two are the only real alternatives, but both are problematic. If moral intuitions are supported only by the unknowable mind of God that means that morality is effectively irrational. Neither evidence nor reason support moral judgments. That might be okay, except that the pious seem always compelled to carve out exceptions. God says not to work on the Sabbath, except that Doctors can save lives and soldiers can fight because, well, human interests demand it.

If moral intuitions are valid because they contribute to human wellbeing, then is it okay to execute an innocent person if that would contribute to the general good? Surely that is morally abhorrent, and if it is, then how can the general good be the ground of justice?

At no risk of surprise, I think that moral intuitions are evolved dispositions. Our natural moral sense makes us good cooperators, and good cooperators have inherited the earth. There is no human community that does not have a concept of reciprocity: if you help me, I should help you in return. That simple moral rule is not only a human rule. It is ubiquitous throughout organic life on earth.

It is also the basis of the liberal idea of human equality. If all human beings are recognized as potential partners in reciprocal exchanges, then the only legitimate basis for authority is consent and the social contract. That is what happens when social animals become morally sophisticated.

So should we agree that it is just to execute an innocent person if it promotes the public good? No. Whatever good might come from that, the violation of the fundamental principle is abhorrent the very basis of any decent society. If someone respects the rights of others, his or her rights ought to be respected. To execute the innocent not only violates the rights of the victim, it corrupts the perpetrators. Human beings are subject to temptation. A habit of giving in can turn us into monsters. Our basic moral sense tells us that such a thing is just plain wrong and it speaks the truth.

So I think that God loves the pious because it is pious. Basic principle so right and wrong can be understood if we recognize that they are good for us and that they correct for our faults. Still, it's good to know that God loves them. Most human beings do not have the leisure for moral philosophy.  It is one source of the greatness of the Christian tradition that it has consistently tried to have it both ways. 

The Era of Ever Bigger Government is Over

Right now the American Left is terrified that Congress might actually take steps to bring our budget deficits under control. Even if taxes are raised that would mean shrinking the size of government, and "left" means nothing in politics if it doesn't mean bigger government. Their argument is that more government spending is necessary to remedy the economic problems we currently suffer.

Robert Samuelson shows what is wrong with this.

Nowadays, all we hear are warnings not to repeat Japan's mistakes that resulted in a "lost decade" of economic growth. Japan's cardinal sins, we're told, were skimping on economic "stimulus" and permitting paralyzing "deflation" (falling prices). People postponed buying, because they expected prices to go lower. That's the conventional wisdom -- and it's wrong.

Just the opposite is true: Japan's economic eclipse shows the limited power of economic stimulus and the exaggerated threat of modest deflation. There is no substitute for vigorous private-sector job creation and investment, and that's been missing in Japan. This is a lesson we should heed.

The Japanese economy rode high for a long time on a vigorous export sector backed by the Government, while the domestic economy remained weak. When the real estate bubble collapsed in the 1990's the result was brutal. The government tried to spend its way out of trouble. It didn't work.

Although the Japanese reacted slowly, they adopted the advice of economics textbooks. They raised spending, cut taxes and let budget deficits balloon. Gross government debt soared from 63 percent of the economy (gross domestic product) in 1991 to 101 percent of GDP by 1997. It's now around 200 percent. The Bank of Japan (their Federal Reserve) cut interest rates, going to zero in 1999 -- a policy that, with some slight interruptions, endures. Despite massive stimulus, rapid growth hasn't resumed two decades later.

Perhaps a more telling bit of information comes by way of Anne Applebaum at Slate.

Throw your Euro stereotypes out the window: Last weekend, a Greek government that has cut public-sector pay and lowered pensions won a clear victory in local elections…

Nor are the Greeks alone. Last month, voters re-elected a Latvian government that cut public-sector workers' pay by 50 percent. The British government coalition, which is also trying to eliminate benefits and cut spending, remains strangely popular, too. Although—contrary to my previous observation—London witnessed its first Continental-style, anti-austerity riot last week, there wasn't much general enthusiasm for the protesters.

It's saying too much to call it a pattern, and it may well not be a permanent change: I'm sure there are plenty of European politicians who won't survive their next encounter with the voters. But there is something in the air. It almost seems as if at least a few Europeans have actually drawn some lessons from the recent recession and accompanying turbulence in the bond markets. They have realized, or are about to realize, that their state sectors are too big. They are about to discover that their public spending, which seemed justified in good economic times, has to be cut. The middle class knows in its heart of hearts that its subsidies, whether for mortgages, university tuition, or even health care, can't last.

I'll believe this movement is for real when I see Jerry Brown implement it in California. It does seem that the trajectory of government growth ever upwards over the last century in developed nations is destined to turn downward, one way or another.

One solution to our problem is simple. All government programs are financed by taking a share of the productive economy. When government programs like public pension funds respond only to demand without adjusting for supply, those programs eat into the capital available for production. That's cooking and eating the goose that lays the golden eggs. All pensions and all similar programs need to be redesigned to respond to the supply. Applebaum has this:

I've described this mood swing before, but two American economists, Douglas Besharov and Douglas Call, recently substantiated it in the Wilson Quarterly. They write that most developed countries in Europe and Asia—not some, most—are moving, "however hesitantly," toward market-based government pension and health care systems, at least for the middle class. Most now fund future pensions with investment funds and stock holdings, either instead of or in addition to pay-as-you-go plans. Even countries historically suspicious of the free market—such as Italy, Sweden, and Poland—now use such schemes.

Market-based systems pay out big when the economy is growing and not so big when it is not. That is what responsible economics looks like.

The other solution is more problematic. Samuelson identifies it:

Economic success ultimately depends on private firms. The American economy is more resilient and flexible than Japan's. But that's a low standard. Neither the White House nor Congress seems to understand that growing regulatory burdens and policy uncertainties undermine business confidence and the willingness to expand. Unless that changes, our mediocre recovery may mimic Japan's.

Government needs to promote a flexible and dynamic private sector in which new firms can be created at a minimal cost. Above all it needs to remove barriers to entrepreneurship and avoid trying to pick winners and losers. Those guys building the next great firm in their garage are the real golden geese.

The President’s No Good Very Bad Fortnight

When Nancy Pelosi announced that she was running for minority leader in the House, Charles Krauthammer asked, with a sly smile, "How good a week can one have?" Members of the White House staff who are capable of self reflection must be asking how bad a fortnight can get.

A jaunt abroad usually provides a president some relief from distress at home. You quietly work all the details out in advance and then shake hands and announce the agreements when you get there. Lots of cameras flash, and you look like you can do something right.

President Obama apparently didn't understand the necessity for the first part. From the New York Daily News:

Obama's inauspicious 10-day, four-nation trip included a failure to land an anticipated slam dunk free trade agreement with South Korea.

It also included a botched effort to rally Western allies to press China to budge on a monetary policy that threatens to keep the U.S. economy in the tank.

China's economic policy is not something over which the President has much leverage. He might have had some influence over our allies, but no, apparently not. The U.S. can act as world leader when it brings power to the table. When we come to the table looking for other nations to bail us out, well, the Germans have their own ideas about what to do. Again, the trick for a President is to figure this out in advance and set expectations accordingly. The President went and begged and was humiliated in public.

The South Korean thing was the result of a previous self-inflicted wound compounded by incompetence. A free trade agreement with Seoul was all worked out when Obama took office. He only needed to sign it. Instead he shelved it and went back to the drawing board. That was back in the stardust and Nobel Prize days. Obama was sure he could do anything.

Now he really needed a treaty. You figure something could have been worked out over the last six months or so. Apparently not. President Obama met with South Korean President Lee Myung-bak and, well, we're not quite there yet. The assumption is that a treaty is coming. Both sides want and need an agreement. The trade representatives of both countries just need to iron out the details. What have they been doing up to now? The answer, it seems, is that the Koreans have been waiting for the Administration to present its case. Gale Collins has this in her New York Times column.

This week he went to South Korea to negotiate a trade agreement, and the agreement fell through. The administration says this is because he was being a tough bargainer, but you don't send the president overseas to fail to get an agreement. Wasn't anybody taking notes when he went to Denmark to fail to get the Olympics for Chicago?

So the President limps home from his no good very bad foreign junket to face a Congress that is decidedly less friendly than the one he has previously enjoyed. "Shellacked at home and shellacked abroad," reads the first line of the San Francisco Chronicle editorial.

One wonders what is left of that great faith that the President inspired only a score of months ago. Gale Collins gives us a hint:

I have faith in Barack Obama. Of course, I also have faith in the New York Mets.

I am putting my money on the Mets. The President seems to have no idea what he is doing.

American Piety

My recent post on Islam generated a long and thought provoking discussion. I decided to use my privilege to weigh in here. Professor Schaff defended two points in his interesting comment, one historical and the other philosophical. The historical point was that religion was "at the core of the American nation at the time of the Founding." That point is impeccable.

The other was a bit more complex. If I understand him right, there are two assertions here. One is that some of America's core principles have their historical roots in Biblical religion. That again strikes me as impeccable. Bill Fleming tries to impeach it.

Jon S., democracy was not invented by Christians. Nor were republics.

Bill is of course right about democracies and republics. The first democracies we know of were in ancient Greece, and the Romans had a republic until they lost it. What Christians did invent (or at least first put on the market for mass consumption) was moral equality. See Luke 21:

1 As Jesus looked up, he saw the rich putting their gifts into the temple treasury. 2 He also saw a poor widow put in two very small copper coins. 3 "Truly I tell you," he said, "this poor widow has put in more than all the others. 4 All these people gave their gifts out of their wealth; but she out of her poverty put in all she had to live on."

That two pennies from a poor woman amount to more than rich gifts from the rich would have looked to any pagan worth his salt like a damned fool thing to say. The idea that the poor and meek might actually be better people in the eyes of God than the rich and bold would have seemed all but incomprehensible to Aristotle or Cicero. To be sure, Socrates thought his poverty was not a shame, but that is because he considered himself a moral hero (which he was). Heroic morality is all about elevating the few great human beings over the rest.

The idea that every human being is as morally important as every other is fundamental to American liberal democracy. As an historical fact, it comes to America from its Christian foundations. Modern liberalism is largely Christian morality with the theology surgically removed. Whether modern liberalism can maintain its commitment to moral equality as the Christian foundation decays, I don't know. Professor Schaff thinks not, and there is reason to suppose he is right.

On the prior point, the American Founding was an enlightenment project. Jefferson's phrases "in the course of human events" and "among the powers of the earth" in the Declaration's preamble speak to this. The founding is human history and not sacred history. Yet it was an act of a largely Christian people.

To what extent were Americans in the late eighteenth century committed to religious liberty as we today would understand that term? Bill Fleming presents us with some good quotes from Jefferson. Jefferson was certainly opposed to religious coercion, meaning any use of the state's punitive powers to compel persons to agree to religious doctrine or engage in religious practices contrary to their conscience. I suspect that Jefferson's sentiments on this were widely shared among fellow Americans.

Jefferson was also opposed to religious tests for office and I think to any religious establishment. The latter implies an official state church and the collection of taxes from dissenters to support that church. This opposition was not widely shared. As Professor Schaff notes, religious establishments and religious tests for office were common at the time.

Virtually no one at the time of the Founding would have objected to state support for religion in general. Consider this from the Northwest Ordnance, passed by Congress before and after the ratification of the Constitution:

Art. 3. Religion, morality, and knowledge, being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged.

Finally, would the Founding generation have thought that tolerance for religious dissenters and protections for free exercise of religion included non-believers? I don't know of any evidence on this, but I suspect that the Founders were or would have been wise enough not to press the issue had it arisen.

As Bill Fleming points out, I seem to recall, Americans were a very diverse people, religiously speaking. Free exercise protected everyone. But religious liberty was understood as promoting religion. In his magnificent Virginia Statue of Religious Liberty, Jefferson uses natural theology to back up his political principle. "Almighty God hath created the mind free…" is a premise in Virginia's argument. The argument is that religious coercion is ineffective and contrary to God's intention, and that religious liberty is no threat to the flourishing of Christianity.

I am all in favor religious liberty for non-Biblical religions and for the non-religious. I am no orthodoxy Christian in any sense of that term. I think that the religious liberty we enjoy today represents the flowering of the founding principles. But I can say what Jefferson could not: that the flowering of an extensive religious liberty has not promoted Biblical faith. Over the last two centuries, religion in the West has steadily declined as a cultural force.

Is that a good or bad thing? Why do modern American liberals think that the poor are important and as worthy of concern and respect as the rich and powerful? Because they were born in a culture that takes that largely for granted. That is an inheritance from Christianity. If Christianity continues to fade, will the sentiment survive it? Maybe. But if free thinkers are honest thinkers, they will take Professor Schaff's second point seriously, and be a bit worried.

Lies & Moratoriums

Friend and occasional commenter A.I. chides me with these words: "You like to call the President a liar KB." I don't in fact do that a lot. I won't say that I don't like doing it when I think it is called for.

Here is an instance where it is called for. From the Politico:

The White House rewrote crucial sections of an Interior Department report to suggest an independent group of scientists and engineers supported a six-month ban on offshore oil drilling, the Interior inspector general says in a new report…

"The White House edit of the original DOI draft executive summary led to the implication that the moratorium recommendation had been peer-reviewed by the experts," the IG report states, without judgment on whether the change was an intentional attempt to mislead the public.

The story goes like this. While the Deepwater oil spill was in full plume, the Administration decided to issue a six month moratorium on off shore oil drilling. The decision was backed up by an Interior Department report. At the eleventh hour, a crucial passage in the report was rewritten. Here is the edited passage:

The recommendations contained in this report have been peer-reviewed by seven experts identified by the National Academy of Engineering.

That one sentence contains two large, obese, inexactitudes, otherwise known as big fat lies. One is that the seven experts endorsed the moratorium. They didn't and have said so. The other is that the Interior Department recommendations were peer-reviewed. They weren't.

This is important enough to revisit for several reasons. One is that the Administration was clearly and intentionally trying to deceive the public. That is not unusual, but in a Republic it ought to be pointed out.

Another is that the Administration was clearly distorting science to back its policy agenda. The Bush Administration was frequently accused of this. If it was serious when a Republican was in the White House, it's serious now.

The Interior Department could have easily gotten a peer-review of their moratorium recommendation, if not from the seven experts, then from some other group of qualified scientists. In fact they never sought such a review.

Finally, the moratorium was very costly, something that put some burden on an already burdened economy and put a severe burden on a lot of people living and working along our Southern coast. If, as indicated above, the moratorium reflected political strategy rather than a reasonable concern for public safety and the environment, it looks like a very bad piece of work.

The Administration's handling of the BP oil spill was appallingly incompetent. The President, aided by the media, exaggerated the severity of the situation. This may have had two motives: one was to provide support for the Administration's energy policy proposals. The other was to provide the Administration an opportunity to act forcefully for the public good. The moratorium was intended as an example of forceful action. Since the example was important, and not any actual outcomes, who needs a stinking peer-review?

Unfortunately, there wasn't anything the Administration could really do to help. They ended up looking impotent while the real experts tinkered with the well. The Administration's inept attempt to exploit the disaster dealt a serious blow to the President's credibility at a time when his party could ill-afford it. It helped to destroy the illusion that Obama brought anything new to Washington.

What we think about when we think about Islam

Asia Bibi. Say the name out loud. I'll be getting back to her. Juan Williams was fired from NPR for speaking frankly about the fears that terrorism breeds in ordinary people. William's remarks were in the context of a faux pas by Bill O'Reilly. On ABC's The View, O'Reilly said that Muslims attacked us on 9/11. That caused Joy Behar and Whoppi Goldberg to walk off the set.

It could have been worse. From Nina Shea and Paul Marshall in the Hudson Institute:

Dutch parliamentarian Geert Wilders was threatened with criminal punishment for hate speech from the moment his anti-Koran film Fitna hit the internet in March 2008. Last month, a Dutch judicial oversight body ordered that he be tried anew after finding that judges in the first round of court proceedings appeared to be biased. Even if Mr. Wilders is ultimately acquitted, as his prosecutors themselves urge, he will have already been punished by years of costly and tiring legal wrangling.

In Europe, criticizing Islam can be a criminal offense. Apparently if one is tried and acquitted, that is evidence enough of bias to warrant a new trial. Shea and Marshall also mention this:

In 2003, then-Dutch Parliamentarian Ayaan Hirsi Ali was subject to a criminal investigation for hate speech for her statements linking Mohammed to abuses against women in Muslim communities. While no criminal charges were ever brought in that case, her legal troubles were not over. In 2005, she was forced to stand trial in a civil action for hate speech after announcing plans for a film on the treatment of homosexuals in Islam, a prospect the complainant—Holland's main Muslim lobbying group—found to both cause "a great deal of pain" and be "blasphemous." The court reprimanded the MP for having "sought the borders of the acceptable," but ruled that her words did not warrant prohibition. Though she prevailed, the defense cost her 8,000 Euros. Around the same period, Ms. Hirsi Ali was forced to go into hiding due to death threats by Muslim extremists and was nearly stripped of her citizenship by the Dutch government, which seemed impatient with her outspoken critique of Islam.

Nothing is so hostile to the principles of the modern Left as militant Islam. Yet the culture of the Left seems reflexively hostile to anyone who criticizes Islam. Openly questioning the treatment of women or homosexuals in Muslim cultures can land you in court in Europe. Houston, we have a problem.

Now let's consider Asia Bibi. Ms. Bibi, a 45 year old mother of five living in Pakistan, has been sentenced to hang for blasphemy. From the London Telegraph:

The court heard she had been working as a farmhand in fields with other women, when she was asked to fetch drinking water.

Some of the other women – all Muslims – refused to drink the water as it had been brought by a Christian and was therefore "unclean", according to Mrs Bibi's evidence, sparking a row.

The incident was forgotten until a few days later when Mrs Bibi said she was set upon by a mob. The police were called and took her to a police station for her own safety.

Shahzad Kamran, of the Sharing Life Ministry Pakistan, said: "The police were under pressure from this Muslim mob, including clerics, asking for Asia to be killed because she had spoken ill of the Prophet Mohammed.

"So after the police saved her life they then registered a blasphemy case against her." He added that she had been held in isolation for more than a year before being sentenced to death on Monday.

At the risk of being tried in a European court, I think that there is something wrong with what is happening to Ms. Bibi. I think that it is evil. I think that there is, in contemporary Islam, a lot of what Thomas Hobbes called "The Kingdom of Darkness". I invite the Dutch courts to chew on that.

Just because a lot of terrorists are motivated by Islam doesn't mean that all Muslims are terrorists. Do all Muslims bear some responsibility terrorist acts committed in the name of Allah and for the horrific ordeal that Asia Bibi is going through? Yes, just as all Catholics share responsibility for the scandals of the Church, and all Buddhists have to take responsibility for the abuses of Buddhism by militant regimes.

Muslims, Christians and Buddhists can take pride in the tremendous achievements of their various faiths throughout history. That pride is inseparable from responsibility for the misdeeds and abuses committed in the name of their respective faiths. The same goes for all other religions.

It is up to every thinking person to decide what to think about when he or she thinks about Islam. That is the heart of liberty. It is the responsibility of modern liberal institutions to protect that liberty.

It is the responsibility of all Muslims to whether the atrocious treatment of Ms. Bibi is what their faith really means, and to condemn or defend her accordingly.

Cognitive Dissonance is the System Democrats Live in

Cognitive dissonance is defined as the discomfort someone feels when he or she tries to hold onto two contradictory ideas at the same time. I suggest that the term ought to be enlarged to include the discomfort one is bound to experience when holding onto ideas that are manifestly at odds with the real world.

For example: the Obama Administration has criticized Israel for building new housing for Jews in East Jerusalem. This is an obstacle to the peace process. Secretary of Defense Gates has criticized Israeli PM Netanyahu for stating bluntly that only a credible military threat can encourage Iran to consider dropping its bid for nuclear weapons. Secretary of Defense Gates is appalled. He insists that our current negotiation strategy is working.

The problem is that there is no such thing as a genuine peace process for there is no player on the Palestinian side that is willing or able to make peace, let alone both; and the Administration's negotiations with Iran, like those of its predecessor, haven't slowed the Iranians down by a single day or a single ounce of radioactive material. Our Middle East policies are based on fantasies, and those fantasies require a lot of mental energy to maintain.

Meanwhile here at home cognitive dissonance is the order of the day. The Democrats seem about to reinstall Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid as party leaders. I endorsed this move in my last post, but I was kidding. Michael Tomasky of the British Guardian doesn't get the joke.

You lose 65 seats, you resign. Period. There should not be a question.

No, there shouldn't be a question. It doesn't matter if Pelosi did the right thing as Speaker or if she will be effective in the minority. Firing the coach is a necessary step to coming to grips with a humiliating loss. If you don't believe me, ask former Dallas Cowboys coach Wade Phillips who got sacked after the Packers beat him 45-7. Or ask Newt Gingrich.

Not firing the coach means not coming to terms. Period. Not coming to terms is what the Democrats specialize in these days. The supporters of the current Congressional leadership say that the last two years were an age of heroes. We did the right thing, and damn the voters, I mean, the torpedoes.

Okay, but when Pelosi urged her line out of the trenches, she didn't tell them they were going to lose 65 seats. She told them that forward was the way to winning the next election. She told them that the Democrats lost big in 94 because they were cowards. She told them that if they were brave this time, they would reap the fruits of victory. She and Generalissimo Obama told them that if they would only push forward, the health care bill would become popular.

Well. The game is over and the staff is raking up the confetti. Obama is patiently taking responsibility while evading responsibility. He tells us that the Democrats spent too much time getting things done and not enough time playing the political game. I hope he knows he is telling a bald faced lie. God help us if he believes what he is saying.

The President gave over thirty speeches during the health care debates. All the wrangling over Congressional Budget Office numbers had nothing to do with policy and everything to do with manipulating the spin in the press. Surely he can't not know that.

Even if he does, it is clear that the Democrats are suffering from cognitive dissonance. Reinstalling Coaches Reid and Pelosi is evidence enough. The dissonance is on full display in the Oval Office. From the Politico:

President Barack Obama has performed his act of contrition. Now comes the hard part, according to Democrats around the country: reckoning with the simple fact that he's isolated himself from virtually every group that matters in American politics.

Congressional Democrats consider him distant and blame him for their historic defeat on Tuesday. Democratic state party leaders scoff at what they see as an inattentive and hapless political operation. Democratic lobbyists feel maligned by his holier-than-thou take on their profession. His own Cabinet — with only a few exceptions — has been marginalized.

His relations with business leaders could hardly be worse… Add in his icy relations with Republicans, the media and, most important, most voters, and it's easy to understand why his own staff leaked word to POLITICO that it wants Obama to shake up his staff and change his political approach.

It should be a no-brainer for a humbled Obama to move quickly after Tuesday's thumping to try to repair these damaged relations, and indeed, in India on Sunday, he acknowledged the need for "midcourse corrections."

But many Democrats privately say they are skeptical that Obama is self-aware enough to make the sort of dramatic changes they feel are needed — in his relations with other Democrats or in his very approach to the job.

That "self-aware" comment makes my point. "Mendacity is the system we live in" said Brick or Big Daddy, I forget which. I would change "mendacity" to "cognitive dissonance". We are awash in it.

Pelosi for Minority Leader

Nancy Pelosi is running for minority leader in the House. She should win. Democrats should support her. Republicans should applaud. She deserves to win because she, more than anyone else including Barack Obama and Harry Reid, is responsible for the passage of ObamaCare.

Democrats took a terrible beating in 1994 because they pushed and then failed to pass a national healthcare bill. They took an even worse beating this year, but this time they got something for it. The obstacles to legislative adventures that the Founding Fathers wisely built into the Constitution made it difficult to pass the bill, but they will also make it all but impossible to remove it.

ObamaCare is an ungodly mess. Speaker Pelosi famously said we had to pass it to find out what is in it. In fact, we have to try to implement it to find out what is in it. We are about to find out. One can be very sure that it will be vastly more expensive than advertised. That, or it will dramatically constrict consumer choices and increase costs for most Americans. Probably it will be the one and do the other.

If Barack Obama has been the man that a lot of voters imagined him to be in 2008, he might have stepped back and taken a fresh look at the problem. He might have encouraged Congress to look at other healthcare systems (say, France) and ask what works and what doesn't. He might have looked for novel solutions. Instead he stood aloof and let Congress create a pile of desires in the form of legislative mandates, desires that Democrats have nurtured long since they stopped thinking about them.

Nancy Pelosi deserves to be the leader of the Democrats in the House because she pushed that steaming pile through Congress. As we indeed find out what is in the pile, she should remain as its visible symbol. She is deeply unpopular among the electorate. Republicans will be glad to have her.

Coming to terms with defeat, or not

Some people say that there's a woman to blame
but I know: it's my own damn fault

Those who have just been shellacked in an election would do well to listen to Jimmy Buffett's Margaritville a few times, while searching for their lost shaker of salt. When Republicans get shellacked they inevitably whine about the biased press. That's a little bit harder now that Fox News dominates Cable, but when did reason ever persuade the wounded heart?

In 2006 and 2008 the Republicans got shellacked nationally. It didn't happen because the other side cheated or because the press was biased or because the moon was in Virgo. They got beat because they lost the confidence of the electorate. In a Republic that's getting beat fair and square.

In South Dakota this year the Democrats got shellacked from top to bottom. My esteemed Keloland Colleague and NSU Colleague Emeritus, David Newquist, is ready with excuses. He blames the "the socio-economic factors affecting the Democratic Party in South Dakota." He doesn't spell out those factors, but it doesn't much matter. In politics, as in golf, you have to play the ball where it lies.

I think it is a scandal that the Democrats did not run a candidate against John Thune. David again is ready with excuses. He seems to think that Senator Thune will do such terrible things to an opponent that no human being could dare to challenge him. I think that that is utter nonsense. Republicans Rand Paul in Kentucky and Daniel Webster in Florida bore up under much worse abuse than any candidate has ever dished out in South Dakota. Instead of turning pale and withdrawing, they fought and won. I cannot believe that Democrats in South Dakota are such cowards as David imagines them to be. I think that the uncontested Senate race, the first in the state's history, was a deliberate strategy.

Nationally, Democrats are looking for their own excuses. One of the most common ones is that President Obama let his foes define him. Here is E.J. Dionne:

President Obama allowed Republicans to define the terms of the nation's political argument for the past two years and permitted them to draw battle lines the way they wanted. Neither he nor his party can let that happen again.

That's just another version of the standard excuse used by both sides after bad news: the voters didn't reject us or our policies! We just didn't explain ourselves properly.

Nonsense on stilts. When President Obama put forth health care reform as his highest priority (among his other highest priorities), he very clearly defined the terms of the argument. Health care reform would "bend the cost curve downward," i.e, health care reform would save the nation money spent on medicine. The problem was that no one believed it because it obviously wasn't true. Even if you believe the CBO estimates, the best you are going to get out of the health care bill is a wash. But the CBO estimates always include caveats indicating that the savings in the bill depend on Congress doing things that it has always promised to do but has never actually managed to do.

Here's why the Democrats took a bath in this election: First, the economy is in dreadful shape. The President today praised the unexpected growth in private sector jobs. But that growth is not enough to make up for population growth, let alone enough to depress the unemployment numbers. Voters are hurting.

But there are two kinds of pain. One is the kind you have when you break your ankle. It really smarts, but you aren't too worried because you figure you are going to get better soon enough. The other is the kind of pain that makes you think that something much worse is happening, something that you won't get over. Pain plus existential fear is a lot worse than just pain.

The trillion dollars a year deficits we are running really worry a lot of us. They make us wonder whether the economic pain we are suffering isn't more like the persistent cough or the ache in the gut that won't go away. Maybe the whole system is sick. Does the President have any plan to put us back on the road to fiscal health? That is one thing that he didn't define very well.

The deficits are the second thing that weighed down the Democrats. The third thing was the health care bill. As the economy stalled and the deficits mounted, the Democrats spent all their energies not on the present crisis but on the thing that they have wanted for decades. The people didn't want it. The voters expressed their dismay not only in opinion polls but in actual elections, but the Democrats in Congress pushed ahead anyway. That was the third thing.

The economy, the deficits, and the health care bill, in that order, did the Democrats in. They ought to come to terms with that. It might not get better.

JazzNote Radio Live on 365

File this one under "shameless self-promotion". I now have a jazz radio show running online on Live365. The show is three hours long, and features hard bop jazz from the sixties and seventies, organized around Miles Davis' two great quintets. There is a little bit of commentary and information on the music played in between every two or three cuts. New material will be added every week or so. Meanwhile, the program will loop, so you can listen to it any time. Here is the link:

http://www.live365.com/stations/kcblanchard

If you have the least bit of interest in jazz, check it out. If you don't, check it out. It's been a lot of work and a barrel of fun.

This is a test I am conducting (at my own expense) as part of the NSU Radio Committee. We are planning to start an NSU online radio station. I am learning a lot about broadcasting that I wanted to know and a lot about Congress's counterproductive legislation that I would rather not have known.

I would add that "JazzNote" first appeared as an occasional feature on this blog.

The Sad State of South Dakota Democrats

I grew up in a one party state. I escaped in my early twenties by driving my Ford Maverick across the borders when an ice storm confused the authorities. The one party state was Arkansas, and I can tell you that it was not a model of political excellence.

One party states encourage corruption and diminish the power of the voters to punish it. Voters can rarely get a grasp of the powers that work around the tables, day to day, in their state government offices. When there are two competitive parties, voters can punish large blocks of legislators. With each party hoping to gain on the other in the next election, there is some general incentive for reducing corruption and promoting good government. When there is only one effective party, the worst excesses result in a few individuals taking all the blame. The larger body of scoundrels remains immune to censure.

As state governments go, the Republic of South Dakota is pretty good. Unlike, say, California, there are fewer forces corrupting our legislative chambers and our state house. But we should worry when one of our two great parties seems to be fading faster than tomatoes after the first frost.

Yesterday South Dakota Democrats failed to win a single state wide race. The gubernatorial election was won by a Republican, which happens so often you'd think it's in the state constitution. The constitutional offices were swept by the GOP. Our lone representative to the U.S. Congress, Representative Herseth Sandlin, lost by a narrow but sufficient margin to her Republican opponent. To her credit, Herseth Sandlin was the only Democrat to win more than 40% of the vote in a state wide race. Our junior U.S. Senator, John Thune, had no opponent. This was the only non-contested Senate race in the nation and the first in the state's history.

I heard a rumor that the Democrats decided not to field a Senate candidate in order to reduce Senator Thune's incentive to involve himself in this year's state politics. I have no idea if that is true, and if it isn't I apologize for repeating it. If it is true, it's damning. I mention it because I can't understand why else they couldn't find someone, anyone, to run. The uncontested race is a scandal in itself.

If all that weren't bad enough, the showing of Democrats showing in the state legislative races was worse. Democrats won just 20 out of the 70 seats in the state House of Representatives. I haven't calculated the vote totals, but that's less than a third of the House.

It doesn't get better in the State Senate, where Democrats won just six of thirty five seats. That's going to stretch those six Senators mighty thin across the Senate committees.

To say that the South Dakota Democratic Party is in disarray is misleading. The problem is not organizational but existential. The party is on the point of going clean out of business. It is effectively dysfunctional. Maybe the State House is beyond their reach, but clearly the House and Senate seats are not. The party is going to need someone to run against Kristi Noem in two years. Tim Johnson is going to retire, sooner or later. In those contests, the Democrats have no bench.

South Dakota needs a viable opposition party. It needs someone like George McGovern to reorganize it, county by county, rebuilding the local party apparatus. Someone like Tom Daschle could have done that. But Daschle, set free by defeat, had neither the time nor the interest for his state or its affairs. What is Stephanie Herseth Sandlin going to do, now that she has time on her hands? I am guessing she is not going to stick around.

There is a tragic flaw in the South Dakota Democrat. The best of that species tend to look beyond our borders for greater things. The voters frequently recognize that, and in an act of grace, set them free. Meanwhile, the party withers. This is not good for Democrats in the state, or for the state itself.

Post Mortem in the Wee Hours

For much of the last year I have been arguing with my friends at Badlands Blue and the Madville Times about the Rasmussen polls on the South Dakota U.S. House race. They argued that Rasmussen was biased in favor of Republicans, and it appears that they were right. Rasmussen's last poll gave Kristi Noem a five point lead. It looks like Noem's margin of victory will be a little less than three percent. I could take refuge in the margin of error, but I prefer to be magnanimous in victory.

I speak here not as a Republican but as a political nerd. By victory I mean only that I have been predicting a Noem win based on a number of indicators. Maybe I am biased as well, but I wasn't wrong.

Why did Noem win? Over the next several days there will be a lot of post mortems. It looks to me pretty simple. Herseth Sandlin did well in all the traditional Democratic strongholds in the state. Noem surged everywhere else, racking up large margins in county after county. Two things, I think, explain this. One is that a lot more South Dakotans can identify with Kristi than with Stephanie. The second is that the Republican wave that swept across these United States did in fact wash across South Dakota.

At this hour, it looks like the Republicans have bagged at least 57 seats in the House of Representatives. That gave Orange John Boehner the opportunity to give an acceptance speech. He choked up a couple of times. He is going to be Speaker. A lot of seats are yet to be determined, so it may well go over sixty. It might not reach the seventies, which last happened in 1938. It is going to be well over the Republican surge of 1994. That might be a good thing and it might be a bad one, but it is a thang, as my Southern brethren say, and it's a big thang.

Republicans fell short of immortal fame in the Senate races, if only because the bar was set so high. They have bagged six Senate seats, and will probably get two more: Colorado and Alaska. Harry Reid survived, and that is one of the great heroic stories that Democrats are well-entitled to tell. However, Mitch McConnell will have forty-one votes when he needs them, and that changes the board.

What astonishes me about this election cycle is how stable it has been. Fifty plus seats in the House and eight Senate seats is what the wizards have been predicting all year. The game was fixed as early as summer a year ago. That is food for thought.

Noem Defeats Herseth Sandlin 12:12am

12:12am.  With ten precincts left to count, Noem is ahead of Herseth Sandlin by about 3% of the vote.  That amounts to more than a lead of more than 8,000 votes out of more 300,000 votes cast.  That is well outside of the 1% threshold for an automatic recount. 

11:30  With 704 of 791 precincts reporting, Noem leads by a little more than 7,000 votes.  Remaining precincts include a little more than half of Todd and Shanon counties, and a few in Custer and Pennington Counties.  There is something odd about the precincts reporting number on Minnehaha county, but they seem to be all in. 

It looks to me unlikely that there are enough votes outstanding in friendly real estate for HS to catch up. However, I remember watching John Thune's lead over Tim Johnson evaporate at the very end, so I will hold my call. 

10:40 John Boehner is giving an acceptance speech.  The networks have all called the House of Representatives for the Republicans.  The best guess now is about sixty seats. 

10:14 pm  Noem is ahead now by a little over 1%.

Well, contrary to what Badlands Blue predicted, it looks like Dennis Daugaard is going to win the South Dakota State House by a comfortable margin. Amazingly enough, John Thune is also favored to win.

Early returns show a close race for House.